The entry below is classified as a LEGACY post, meaning that it was written (well) before the current version of Avalonstar was released. Although these posts have survived the numerous moves over years, there is no guarantee that they've survived the trip unscathed (especially the links).

LEGACY–

May 10, 2006

Diary of a Linux Noob (Part 1)

Talk about thinking I'd never talk about Linux, Unix or any *nix in this place - but behold, the power of the MacBook Pro and Parallel's Virtual Machine have granted me the key to the world of Linux.

So, some history.

I was never always a Macintosh user, nor have I ever touched a build of Linux before about a year ago. Yes, I was a Windows user, happily designing in Windows XP. That's an oxymoron to most people, as it is to me now. But about a year ago, three things happened. I was able to get a free miniMac from the old Gratis Networks (now FreePay), and I had signed myself up onto one of Media Temple's lovely Dedicated-Virtual servers (herein referred to as (dv)). For those that have read my (mt) writings in the past, you'll already know that a vanilla (dv) installation has Red Hat Linux Enterprise 3. The third event that took place was that I got the job at Facebook, a company that has always been LAMP-based.

Before about six months ago, I had never touched the command line. It was because of Facebook that I learned PHP, and it was also because of Facebook that I started my journeys into Linux-land. Things went downhill from there as I tried, unsuccessfully, to install PHP5 on my (dv) using the RPM and yum programs. Which is why, to this day, I have never written part 2 of my Media Temple series. However, after getting a fresh start and some help from the lovely admins at (mt), I was able to start small. Fast forward to after the CSSReboot, and I was back to playing with my server again at the hands of my "rival" Jeff Croft, this time, upgrading Python so I could install Django. I was able to successfully build both Python and then later Subversion. At the same time, I had requested a MacBook Pro and started playing around with Parallels.

What's Next?

What? Am I still a designer you say? Of course! But I'm starting to find myself jumping head first into this stuff. Right now I'm playing with both Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu, and if virtualization gets fast enough, I might even host my development server there. Why? Well, because it would probably help me learn Linux a bit more. Updates to come as I start to get the hang of this.

But here's a question as I close this entry, what would you recommend a Linux noob such as myself to do? (I'm sure it'll help those who aren't as explicit as I as well.)